Identifying and Inventorying Intangible Cultural Heritage

Intangible Cultural Heritage

Identifying
 K The Oral Heritage and
Cultural Manifestations of
the Zápara People, Ecuador
and Peru

The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage

defines intangible cultural heritage as the practices, representations,
expressions, knowledge and skills – including the instruments, objects
Photo © T. Fernández

artefacts and cultural spaces associated with them – that communities,

groups and individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This
intangible cultural heritage is transmitted from generation to generation
and is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to
Photo © Ministerio de Cultura y

their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and
provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting
Deportes/GMA PRO

respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.

and inventorying Intangible cultural heritage takes many forms. on the obligation to safeguard the intangible
The Convention explains that it may be cultural heritage present on their territories. At
expressed in a number of domains, including an international level, the Convention
Photo © Ahmed Ben Ismaїl

but not limited to: establishes two Lists, the List of Intangible
Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent
a. Oral traditions and expressions including
Safeguarding and the Representative List of the
language as a vehicle of the intangible
Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The
cultural heritage;
goal of these Lists is to call attention to those
b. Performing arts; elements of intangible cultural heritage that are
representative of human creativity and cultural
c. Social practices, rituals and festive events;
diversity and especially those in need of urgent
Photo © Mila Santova

d. Knowledge and practice about nature and safeguarding.

LLL The Rabinal Achí
Dance Drama Tradition,
Guatemala
LL The Cultural Space of
Jemaa el-Fna Square,
Photo © Denis Cordier – Fotolia.com
the universe;
e. Traditional craftsmanship.
It goes without saying that many elements of
intangible cultural heritage might belong to one
or more of these domains.
The main purposes of the Convention are to
The Convention focuses on the role of
communities and groups in safeguarding
intangible cultural heritage. It is concerned with
processes and conditions rather than products,
placing emphasis on living heritage that is
performed by people, often collectively, and
communicated through living experience. It

Morocco
L The Bistritsa Babi – Archaic
Polyphony, Dances and
Ritual Practices from the
Shoplouk region,
Bulgaria
safeguard such heritage, to ensure respect for it,
to raise awareness about its importance and to
provide for international cooperation and
assistance in these fields. Countries that ratify
the Convention (known as States Parties) take
deals with heritage that communities
themselves deem important, and strives to
contribute to the promotion of creativity and
diversity, and to the well-being of communities,
groups, and society at large.
4 . INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE
Safeguarding without freezing
To be kept alive, intangible cultural heritage must
be relevant to its community, continuously
recreated and transmitted from one generation to
another. There is a risk that certain elements of
intangible cultural heritage could die out or
disappear without help, but safeguarding does
not mean fixing or freezing intangible cultural
heritage in some pure or primordial form.
Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage is about
the transferring of knowledge, skills and meaning.
Transmission – or communicating heritage from
generation to generation – is emphasized in the
Convention rather than the production of
concrete manifestations such as dances, songs,
musical instruments or crafts. Therefore, to a large
extent, any safeguarding measure refers to
strengthening and reinforcing the diverse and
varied circumstances, tangible and intangible, that
are necessary for the continuous evolution and
interpretation of intangible cultural heritage, as
well as for its transmission to future generations.
Safeguarding measures to ensure that intangible
cultural heritage can be transmitted from one
generation to another are considerably different
from those required for protecting tangible
heritage (natural and cultural). However, some
elements of tangible heritage are often associated
with intangible cultural heritage. That is why the
Convention includes, in its definition of intangible
cultural heritage, the instruments, objects,
artefacts and cultural spaces associated with it.
Does this mean that intangible heritage should
always be safeguarded, or be revitalized at any
cost? As any living body, it follows a life cycle and
therefore some elements are likely to disappear,
after having given birth to new forms of
expressions. It might be that certain forms of
intangible cultural heritage, despite their
economic value, are no longer considered
relevant or meaningful for the community itself.
As indicated in the Convention, only intangible
cultural heritage that is recognized by the
communities as theirs and that provides them
with a sense of identity and continuity is to be
safeguarded. By ‘recognition’, the Convention
means a formal or, more often, informal process
by which communities acknowledge that specific
practices, representations, expressions, knowledge
and skills and, if appropriate, associated
instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces,
form part of their cultural heritage.
Safeguarding measures must always be developed
and applied with the consent and involvement of
the community itself. In certain cases, public
intervention to safeguard a community’s heritage
may be undesirable, since it may distort the value
such heritage has for its community. Moreover,
safeguarding measures must always respect the
customary practices governing access to specific
aspects of such heritage, for example, sacred
intangible cultural heritage manifestations or those
that are considered secret.
Inventories: identifying for safeguarding
The Convention is a permissive document and
the majority of its articles are worded in non-
prescriptive language, allowing governments to
implement it flexibly. However, drawing up
inventories is one of the specific obligations
outlined in the Convention and in the
Operational Directives for its implementation.
Inventories are integral to the safeguarding of
intangible cultural heritage because they can
raise awareness about intangible cultural
heritage and its importance for individual and
collective identities. The process of inventorying
intangible cultural heritage and making those
inventories accessible to the public can also
encourage creativity and self-respect in the
communities and individuals where expressions
LLL The Cultural Space of
and practices of intangible cultural heritage Jemaa el-Fna Square,
originate. Inventories can also provide a basis for Morocco
formulating concrete plans to safeguard the
LL The Mystery Play of
intangible cultural heritage concerned. Elche, Spain
L The Cultural Space of the
According to Article 11 of the Convention, each
Boysun District, Uzbekistan
State Party is required to take the necessary
measures to ensure the safeguarding of the I Taquile and its Textile Art,
Peru
intangible cultural heritage present in its territory
and to include communities, groups and relevant
NGOs in the identification and definition of

elements of that intangible cultural heritage.
Photo © UNESCO / Jane Wright
Identification is a process of describing one or
more specific elements of intangible cultural
heritage in their own context and distinguishing
them from others. This process of identifying and
defining should lead to ‘inventorying’. Inventorying
should be done ‘with a view to safeguarding’ –
that is, inventorying is not an abstract exercise but
an instrumental one. Therefore, if a certain number
of elements of intangible cultural heritage have
already been identified, States may decide to start
implementing safeguarding projects for those
elements.
Recognizing that States will take different
approaches to inventorying, the Convention
continues that States Parties are obliged to create
one or more inventories of the intangible heritage
Photo © Jaime Brotons
present in their territory, and shall update them
regularly (Article 12). While Articles 11 and 12 are
more prescriptive than other Articles in the
Convention, they still provide enough flexibility for
a State Party to determine how it will prepare its
inventories. States are free to create their inventories
in their own fashion. However, intangible heritage
elements should be well defined in the inventories
to help put safeguarding measures into practice.
A State Party is not expected to have already
Photo © National Commission of Uzbekistan
drawn up one or more inventories before
ratifying the Convention, although many have
been doing so for many decades. On the
contrary, the development and updating of
inventories is an ongoing process that can never
be finished. It is not necessary to have
completed an inventory in order to start
receiving assistance or filing nominations for the
Lists of the Convention. However, the
Operational Directives for implementing the
Photo © Instituto Nacional de Cultura / Dante Villafuerte
Convention require that a State Party submitting
a nomination file for inscription on either the
Urgent Safeguarding List or the Representative
List must demonstrate that the proposed
element is already included in an inventory of the
intangible cultural heritage present in its territory.
Since there are great differences among States
concerning population, territories and
IDENTIYING AND INVENTORYING . 5
distribution of intangible cultural heritage, as
well as great diversity in their political and
administrative structures, the Convention leaves
each State Party a great deal of freedom to draw
up inventories in ways best suited to its own
situation, allowing national and local conditions
and concerns to be taken into account.
Among the safeguarding measures enumerated
in the Convention, research and documentation
are likely to be among the first strategies that
States will consider in order to understand ‘what
is there’, ‘who does it’ and ‘why they do it’. States
may wish to set up national intangible cultural
heritage committees to coordinate this work,
including relevant institutions, researchers and
community representation, which will also
facilitate interaction between members of
communities and researchers.
States are able to choose whether to create a
single, over-arching inventory or a set of smaller,
more restricted ones. That is why neither the
Convention nor the Operational Directives ever
speak of ‘a national inventory’: instead, they refer
to ‘one or more inventories’. In this way, States
are not forced to include all domains or all
communities within a single system. They may
also incorporate existing registries and
catalogues. A system that includes multiple
inventories may be particularly appealing to
federal states where responsibility for culture
falls outside the remit of the central
government, allowing sub-national regions or
provinces to create their own inventories.
Involvement of tradition bearers and
practitioners
In spite of the freedom given to States in the
way they inventory intangible cultural heritage,
the Convention does impose several conditions.
The most important of these is the one
requiring community involvement.
Since communities are the ones who create
intangible cultural heritage and keep it alive, they
have a privileged place in safeguarding it. The
communities that practise intangible cultural
6 . INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE
heritage are better placed than anyone else to
identify and safeguard it, and therefore they
should be involved when their intangible cultural
heritage is to be identified through inventorying.
The Convention’s definition of intangible cultural
heritage reminds us that it must be recognized
by its communities, groups or individuals;
without their recognition, nobody else can
decide for them that a given expression or
practice is their heritage. So it is natural that
inventorying cannot happen without the
involvement of the communities, groups or
individuals whose heritage is to be identified and
defined. Sometimes, of course, communities may
not have the power, or the means, to do this on
their own. In this case the State, or agencies,
institutions and organizations, might work to
help them inventory their living heritage.
Documentation consists of recording intangible
cultural heritage in tangible forms, in its current
state, and collecting documents that relate to it.
Documentation often involves the use of various
recording means and formats and the collected
documents are often preserved in libraries,
archives or websites, where they may be
consulted by the communities concerned and
the larger public. But communities and groups
also have traditional forms of documentation
such as songbooks or sacred texts, weaving
samplers or pattern books, or icons and images
that constitute recordings of intangible cultural
heritage expressions and knowledge. Innovative
community self-documentation efforts and
programmes to repatriate or disseminate
archival documents in order to encourage
continued creativity are some of the proven
safeguarding strategies increasingly being used.
Also, Article 13 (d) (ii) stresses that States Parties
should always keep in mind customary practices
related to providing access to intangible
heritage. In some instances, this may mean that
certain forms of intangible cultural heritage
should not be inventoried or that some
intangible cultural heritage already included in
inventories should be made public only under
certain restrictions. Communities may decide,
Photo © Subdirección de Etnografía. Museo Nacional de Antropología
for instance, to indicate who the custodians of
certain knowledge are, rather than recording
detailed documentation on sensitive topics in
the inventories. Providing information about an
element of intangible cultural heritage in an
inventory makes access to that element easier.
According to the spirit of the Convention, the
will of those communities who refuse to include
an element of their intangible cultural heritage
in an inventory must be respected.
Although some States already and intensively
involve communities of intangible cultural
heritage bearers, many inventory projects do
not yet take into account the provisions of the
Convention concerning communities’
involvement. They were often developed by
Photo © Pesi S. Fonua
organizations and individuals from outside the
communities and often were not created with
the aim of ensuring the viability of intangible
cultural heritage, as required in the Convention.
States Parties are responsible for making
appropriate institutional arrangements for
involving communities in the inventory-making
process. Such arrangements might include the
establishment or designation of intersectoral
administrative bodies for assessing relevant
Photo © Jaime Brotons
existing legislation, institutions and traditional
safeguarding systems, as well as for identifying
best practices and areas for improvement.
Such bodies would be in charge of drawing
LLL The Indigenous
up inventories of intangible cultural heritage,
Festivity dedicated to the
developing safeguarding policies, developing
Dead, Mexico
initiatives to raise awareness about the
LL The Lakalaka, Dances
importance of intangible cultural heritage and
and Sung Speeches of
Tonga
encourage public participation in inventorying
and safeguarding it. The administrative body
L The Mystery Play of Elche,
should also, where necessary, develop appropriate
Spain
safeguarding measures for inventoried intangible
cultural heritage. States Parties may also wish to
establish advisory or consultative bodies that
would comprise practitioners and other tradition
bearers, researchers, NGOs, civil society, local
representatives and relevant others, as well as
local support teams including community
representatives, cultural practitioners and others
with specific skills and knowledge in training

and capacity building. Methods for inventorying
intangible cultural heritage might be carried
out in steps and the identification of all relevant
stakeholders and their involvement in the
process. Potential consequences of inventorying,
procedures to ensure an ethical relationship
between stakeholders and customary practices,
governing access to the intangible cultural
heritage also need to be identified.
Inventorying should be a top-down and
bottom-up process involving local communities
as well as governments and NGOs. In order for
States Parties to satisfy the requirement of
communities’ involvement, procedures should
be established for:
I Proper identification of communities or
groups and their representatives;
I Ensuring that only intangible cultural heritage
recognized by the communities or groups is
inventoried;
I Ensuring that the free, prior and informed
consent of the communities or groups is
obtained for inventorying;
Community-based documentation
contributes to the viability of intangible
cultural heritage in the Philippines
Between 2003 and 2004 the Subanen
community in Western Mindanao in the
Philippines undertook innovative
documentation of their indigenous
knowledge about the plants found in their
ancestral domain. The plants are valuable to
them for their medicinal, agricultural,
economic, and religious uses.
Plant diversity in the region is declining due
to population pressure and climatic changes.
Elders recognized that as plant diversity
dwindles, knowledge about plants also
declines. They also realized that as the
younger generations are drawn into
mainstream society, orally transmitted
indigenous knowledge is no longer passed
on to the next generation, and could
eventually disappear forever.
IDENTIYING AND INVENTORYING . 7
I Ensuring the consent of communities when
involving non-community members;
I Respecting customary practices regarding
access to intangible cultural heritage;
I Actively involving local or regional
governments;
I Adopting and following a code of ethics that
should take into account the lessons learnt
Photo © Hasim Polat
from good practices worldwide.
Drawing up inventories
Many existing inventorying systems and almost
Photo © Mongolian National Centre for Intangible Heritage
all older inventories were not created with
safeguarding in mind, as understood in the 2003
Convention. Some of them were designed by
researchers to meet their own needs. Moreover,
some old inventories are particularly
problematic as they may have been produced
under colonial conditions or as part of nation-
building exercises.
LL The Mevlevi Sema
Both Article 11 (b) and Article 12 of the Ceremony, Turkey
Convention imply that the totality of the L The Traditional Music of
intangible cultural heritage in a country should the Morin Khuur, Mongolia
The Subanen leaders sought assistance from This ‘self-documentation’ has turned out to be
specialized organizations to provide them a successful way to preserve orally transmitted
with the skills to document this indigenous botanical knowledge and to make it available
knowledge themselves, with external for present and future generations,
experts acting as facilitators. The non-literate contributing to the viability of this part of the
but knowledgeable community elders Subanen’s intangible cultural heritage.
provided the information, and younger
literate community members assumed the
role of documenters.
The resulting documentation was
packaged into a multimedia format and
other popular educational materials in
English with Subanen translations. These
Photo © © Vel J. Suminguit
materials were formally registered with the
government copyright office, in order to
guarantee the community’s intellectual
property rights. The community’s education
programme now uses them to teach L A Subanen performing ritual before entering
schoolchildren about their culture; they are new documentation site as a way of asking
also used as curriculum material for adults permission from the unseen and informing them
who want to learn to read and write in their that specimen collection is to be carried out for
ancestral language. documentation
8 . INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

A four-year project to record living music UNESCO launched a four-year project to

Photo © David Stehl/UNESCO

and dance traditions in Ethiopia: towards a collect and inventory music and dance
comprehensive national intangible cultural traditions throughout Ethiopia. As a first
heritage inventory step in the compilation of a more
comprehensive national inventory
With over 80 living languages and ancient encompassing all aspects of Ethiopia’s
cultures nourished by African and Middle intangible cultural heritage, the project
Eastern influences, Ethiopia is a land of aimed at building local capacities and
astounding diversity. Forged over a long document living practices and traditions.
history of isolation and exchange periods
resulting from Ethiopia’s unique geographical In order to guarantee the continuation of
and political context, this diversity is the work by Ethiopian specialists, courses in
abundantly reflected in the country’s music ethnomusicology were organized at the
and dances. University of Addis Ababa and the Yared
Music School using specifically designed
Indeed, the music of Ethiopia has emerged curriculum materials in English and Amharic.
from Christian-Orthodox, Judeo-Ethiopian Training in inventorying music and dance
and Muslim traditions as well as African began in 2006 with “The Musical Landscape
polyphonic and instrumental expressions. of Addis Ababa”, a survey of the various
Although predominantly vocal, Ethiopian Ethiopian traditions found in the capital.
music features a variety of instruments, some Students then joined European specialists
of which reputedly date from Old Testament who were already working in the field to
times. Among the most widespread are study traditions and practices in different
baganna and krar lyres, the masenqo fiddle, regions. Activities included conducting
the kabaro drums and the washint flute. research among the Maale people of
southern Ethiopia and organizing training
in the use of equipment for multi-track
polyphonic recording for the staff of the
South Omo Museum and Research Center in
the town of Jinka. Numerous centres and
museums around the country have received
training and equipment adapted to their
particular needs.
By the project’s completion, a generation
of Ethiopians has been trained to carry
on the national intangible cultural heritage
inventory by including other domains while
also raising awareness of the importance of
intangible cultural heritage among local and
national authorities thus contributing directly
to the long-term safeguarding of Ethiopia’s
living heritage.

be covered, since they refer to the intangible
heritage present in the territory of the State
Party. Inventories should therefore be as
comprehensive and complete as possible.
Photo © François-Xavier Freland / UNESCO
risk of disappearance is used as a criterion for
inclusion in the inventory.
In order to reach as quickly as possible a certain

However, in many cases, this may prove an almost
impossible task. Inventories can never be
completed or fully updated because of the
immense scope of the heritage covered by the
Convention and the fact that intangible cultural
heritage is constantly changing and evolving.
L The Vimbuza Healing Considering the amount of intangible heritage to
Dance, Malawi be identified and listed, some priorities might
I The Carnival of need to be set. In this case, those elements which
Barranquilla, Colombia are recognized by the communities or by their
practitioners as particularly important for their
identity or as being particularly representative of
degree of representativeness in the inventories,
States may wish to start drawing up inventories
by providing relatively brief information. Some
elements might benefit from greater attention
than others, but it is advisable as far as possible
to present each element according to the same
template and to refer to detailed information
available elsewhere rather than include it within
the inventory.
Inventories must be regularly updated, as stated
in Article 12 of the Convention. This is vital due
to the fact that intangible cultural heritage
Photo © Ministry of Culture, Republic of Colombia

their intangible cultural heritage might be
inventoried first. The role of creating inventories
as a safeguarding measure should not be
forgotten. Therefore, where possible, the viability
of inventoried elements should be indicated and
threats to their survival outlined. This is for
instance the case of inventories in Brazil and
Colombia. In Bhutan, Bulgaria and Lithuania the
constantly evolves and threats to its viability can
emerge very rapidly. Many national inventories
already contain elements that no longer exist
while others include information on practices
that have substantially changed. States Parties
are obliged to periodically provide relevant
information on their inventories, including
information on the process of regular updating.
10 . INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE
The Convention explicitly leaves the choice of
whether to draft one or several inventories to the
States Parties, but remains silent about parameters
for defining the scope of each of the inventories in
the case of a multiplex system. One can think of
discrete inventories for different domains of
intangible cultural heritage, different communities,
different regions, or for different subjects of federal
States. Whoever the actors involved in preparing
the inventories or parts of them are, at the end of
the day it is the States, i.e. the States Parties to the
Convention, who are responsible for the design
and implementation of their inventories.
While States Parties may be encouraged when
drawing up inventories to follow the definition of
intangible cultural heritage as developed for the
Convention, they are not obliged to do so,
particularly as inventories may be drawn up in a
manner best suited to the circumstances of the
State Party in question. However, if a State Party
proposes an element for inscription on the
Representative List or Urgent Safeguarding List or
wishes to request financial assistance for the
element’s safeguarding, it will have to demonstrate
that it meets the definition of intangible cultural
heritage as laid out in Article 2 of the Convention.
Most inventories will include a system of
classifying the intangible cultural heritage. One
place to begin would be the domains listed in
Article 2.2 of the Convention: oral traditions and
expressions including language as a vehicle of
the intangible cultural heritage; performing arts;
social practices, rituals and festive events;
knowledge and practice about nature and the
universe; and traditional craftsmanship.
As already noted, the Convention makes it clear
that these domains are not comprehensive, and
any system of classification is only a tool for
helping to organize the information within an
inventory.
Some inventory systems, like those in Cape Verde,
Mauritius and South Africa, more or less follow the
domains laid out in the 2003 Convention. In other
States Parties, there is a great deal of variation:
some, especially in Africa and Latin America,
present languages as intangible cultural heritage
in their own right and not just as a ‘vehicle’ of it,
and others explicitly mention ‘music and dance’
rather than the term ‘performing arts’; still others
consider music separately from dance, and so on.
Photo © Otanazar Mat'vakubov
However, numerous categories in national
inventories can be easily accommodated under
one or more of the domains outlined in the
Convention: ‘traditional medicine‘ and ‘indigenous
knowledge systems‘ might be classified under
‘knowledge about nature‘ and such categories as L Shashmaqom Music,
‘games‘ or ‘play‘ and ‘social organization‘, under Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
the domain of ‘social practices‘. Themes such as
‘mythology‘ and names of places, objects or
animals could be accommodated under ‘oral
expressions‘ and some religious ceremonies and
pilgrimages, under ‘rituals‘ or ‘festive events‘.
Other categories such as ‘memories and beliefs’,
‘genealogical information’ or ‘culinary traditions’
also find their place in one or more of the
domains presented in Article 2 of the Convention.
Divergence concerning domains often reflects
the different focuses of communities’ intangible
cultural heritage in different parts of the world,
and this is perfectly consistent with the
Convention’s insistence that each State should
draw up its inventories in a manner geared to
its own situation. Algeria and Haiti, for example,
have separate categories for particular
religious practices.
Some inventorying systems are not limited to
elements of the intangible cultural heritage. The
Lithuanian system, for instance, integrates tangible
elements associated to practices of intangible
cultural heritage, to the traditions’ bearers or to
archives, as well as several elements that are no
longer practised. On the other hand, in Belgium,
there are plans to include elements of cyber
culture and virtual practices in the classificatory
system of intangible cultural heritage.
Photo © Andrew P. Smith / UNESCO
Another major difference between States is that
some limit themselves to inventorying
indigenous or native intangible cultural heritage
while others – Belgium and the USA, for instance
– also take into account the intangible cultural

heritage of immigrant communities. Many
multicultural States do not restrict themselves to
the expressions and practices of the most
widespread culture but rather undertake, from
the start, to consider the intangible cultural
heritage of minority groups.
There is also a huge variation in the amount of
documentation and the degree of detail
provided in inventories. It seems not physically
or financially feasible to provide detailed
information about all the intangible cultural
heritage manifestations present in countries
with a tremendous variety of intangible cultural
heritage. About half of the systems in use today
present extensive documentation, while others
are less exhaustive in providing information
about listed elements. Some take the form of
catalogues or registers, while others present
information as a series of encyclopaedia-like
entries. In Brazil, a system is used that
incorporates both approaches. There is a
national level of elements that have been
included in a ‘Registry’ and another level with
elements included in an ‘Inventory’. On a
national level, extensive documentation is
IDENTIYING AND INVENTORYING . 11
provided for both of these categories, while in
the federal states inventories are being created
without this weight of documentation.
In most countries there are no legal provisions
Photo © UNESCO / Yves Parfait Koffi
to protect the property rights of the communities,
groups of practitioners and tradition bearers
over their traditional cultural and social practices
and expressions. This may mean that caution is
necessary when dealing with easily accessible
information with possible commercial applications.
L The Oral Heritage of Without appropriate legal protections, outsiders
Gelede, Benin, Nigeria and may use and take commercial advantage of
Togo
information such as traditional medical
knowledge, knowledge of natural resources, and
of music and oral traditions. Since communities
should give their free, prior and informed consent
before their heritage is inventoried, they can
restrict how much information they wish to
provide – or none – about elements of their
intangible cultural heritage. Communities may
not always be aware of the potential value of their
heritage to others, so those responsible for the
inventorying should be sensitive not to include
K The Maroon Heritage of information that would violate privacy or invite
Moore Town, Jamaica unfair exploitation by outsiders.
12 . INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

Particular attention should be given to rapid

evolutions with significant impact from external
factors: while they may have their roots in
traditional intangible cultural heritage elements,
they may not always be seen as resulting from
an uninterrupted chain of development. Some
inventorying systems do not include revitalized
elements where there has been such a break;
others choose to include them if they are
recognized by a community as its heritage.

Some States divide their inventories along

Photo © Juan Rodriguez Acosta

L The Cocolo Dance
Drama Tradition,
Dominican Republic
There is no minimum age for how long practices
need to be established and transmitted between
generations in order for them to be considered
elements of intangible cultural heritage under
the Convention. Some States impose such a
requirement on elements to be inventoried, and
these range from two or three generations up to
seven. In some cases, it is difficult to establish
over how many generations a tradition has been
practised, particularly in communities whose first
language has traditionally not existed in a written
form. Since the community itself should decide
what it recognizes as its intangible cultural
heritage, imposing a uniform, external age
limit seems to contradict the Convention.
internal administrative lines. Venezuela, for
example, presents the cultural heritage of each
of its municipalities separately. Federal states
often structure their inventories according
to territories; indeed, many States use admini-
strative partitions as a primary classifying
principle.
In Colombia, a separate inventory is under
development for each of the country’s thirty-
two departments. China officially recognizes
fifty-six ethnic groups and organizes its
inventory accordingly. Some countries, such as
Haiti, feel no need to distinguish between
different communities or regions. However, due
to urbanisation, migration and centralizing
policies, present day administrative divisions do
not always coincide with borders of regions that
were traditionally occupied by discrete ethno-
linguistic or otherwise definable communities.

The Bulgarian experience in inventory-
making
In Bulgaria, at the national level, the Ministry
of Culture (National Folklore Committee) and
the Institute of Folklore of the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences carry the responsibility
for the safeguarding, inventorying and
promotion of the intangible cultural heritage.
An inventorying project was conducted in
2001 and 2002. The inventory was made on
two levels, national and regional-local
according to the existing administrative
divisions, and combined the territorial
principle with classification according to
ethnic and religious background as these
two factors often coincided. The main
criteria for including an element in the
inventory were authenticity,
representativeness, artistic value, vitality,
rootedness in tradition. The selected
domains for classifying intangible cultural
heritage were traditional rites and feasts,
traditional singing and music playing,
traditional dancing and children’s games,
traditional narration, traditional crafts and
traditional production of home-made
objects or products and traditional
medicine. A questionnaire established by
experts was sent to communities both
through administrative channels and
through the network of local chitalishte
(‘culture and community centers’), the
collected data were analyzed by the experts
and a first version of the inventory was
elaborated and put online for comments.
Upon integration of comments and
additional field research, the final version of
the inventory was published on paper and
on the Internet. Today, the chitalishte
network, coordinated by the Regional
Cultural Policy Directorate with the Ministry
of Culture, ensures to a large extent the
transmission of knowledge and skills in the
area of the intangible cultural heritage.

The Brazilian experience in inventory-
making
Brazilian experiences in inventory-making go
back to the creation in the 1930s of the
Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage
(IPHAN) and the application of an
administrative act called Tombamento for the
legal protection of cultural heritage, both
movable and immovable. The Tombamento
was based on Western notions of
authenticity, including preservation of
property as much as possible in its original
form, focusing on objects rather than on
related social processes. When, in the 1970s,
the concept of cultural heritage was
broadened to include explicitly intangible
assets, it became obvious that living cultural
assets were to be safeguarded through
specially adapted means, which eventually
led to the creation by decree of the Registry
of Intangible Cultural Assets in 2000.
Through this Registry intangible cultural
heritage items are documented and
publicized, in a way that takes into account
the collective and individual rights linked
Photo © Yu, Jae-Won
to that heritage. Considering the dynamic
nature of intangible cultural heritage,
the Registry must be periodically
revised, at least once every ten years.
The registered properties are declared
‘Brazilian Cultural Heritage’, which entitles
them to be promoted and to receive
financial support for safeguarding plans.
Parallel to the Registry, a National
Programme for Intangible Heritage was
established for preserving the country’s
ethnic and cultural diversity, which
included the National Inventory of
Cultural References. For this National
Inventory, an inventory-making
methodology was prepared by IPHAN
aimed at the identification of cultural
assets, both tangible and intangible.
Intangible cultural assets are divided into
four categories: ‘Celebrations’, ‘Forms of
expression’, ‘Craftsmanship or traditional
knowledge’ and ‘Places or physical spaces’.
The local delimitation of inventorying
activities may correspond to a village, a
district, a zone, an urban sector, a culturally
differentiated geographic region or a
complex of territories.
Photo © J.K Walusimbi
J The Gangneung Danoje
festival, Republic of Korea
IDENTIYING AND INVENTORYING . 13
The inventory-making methodology
comprises three phases: (1) preliminary
collection, (2) identification and
documentation, and (3) interpretation.
The inventories carried out by IPHAN
emphasize the cultural references of
indigenous people, Afro-Brazilian citizens
and groups inhabiting protected urban
nuclei, as well as people living in
multicultural urban contexts. There is a
special focus on cultural properties at risk.
According to IPHAN, an important goal of
inventorying intangible cultural heritage is to
maintain the country’s cultural diversity in a
context of homogenizing tendencies, and to
contribute through the implementation of
safeguarding mechanisms to social inclusion
and improvement of living conditions of the
tradition bearers. Since 2000, IPHAN has
concluded 48 inventories of cultural
references throughout the country and other
47 are now in progress. Sixteen cultural assets
have been registered since 2002 and eleven
action plans are being implemented in order
to guarantee their transmission and
continuity.
L Barkcloth making in
Uganda
14 . INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

The Venezuelan experience in inventory-
making
The Ley de Protección y Defensa del Patrimonio
Cultural (the Venezuelan Law on the
Protection and Defence of Cultural Heritage)
of 1993 decreed the establishment of an
Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural, IPC (Institute
of Cultural Heritage, www.ipc.gob.ve). One
of the main tasks of this Institute is the
inventorying of Venezuelan Cultural Heritage.
During a first inventorying exercise, only 610
cultural goods were declared of which 476
were architectural (colonial). The Institute
realised then that this did not reflect the
wealth and variety of the country’s cultural
heritage. The Institute decided therefore in
2003 to start a new inventory project that
would aim at reflecting all forms of cultural
heritage of all Venezuelan municipalities. In
2005, 68 000 expressions of tangible and
intangible heritage had been registered, and
the project was expected to be finalised with
some 110 000 expressions inventoried.
The new inventory aimed at reflecting those
cultural manifestations that are valuable for
the communities themselves. By doing so, it
rejects the principles previously used of the
establishment by a specialist of their
exceptional value, and of the appropriation of
heritage by society in general through public
policies. The final goal of the new inventory
was instead to register all the activities, mani-
festations, products or cultural expressions
that represent and socially characterize each
of the Venezuelan communities and groups.
The basic inventorying criterion used was the
representative character of the tangible and
intangible cultural heritage for the
communities and groups, including the
listing of individuals with distinctive skills
that symbolise a collective identity.
Field work started in 2004 through the
gathering of information, on municipal basis,
by using pre-existing questionnaires, which
resulted to be of limited effectiveness as they
were neither reflecting the representative
principle of the exercise, nor including the
right questions for valuing other heritage than
monuments or sites. New questionnaires
were therefore developed with the idea that
one question would lead to the next, leaving
enough flexibility to afterwards compile and
edit the information gathered. The
assessment criterion used for determining the
representative character was the need to
prove the evidence of a collective valorisation
of the cultural goods to be registered. Lacking
this evidence, the elements were rejected.
The information gathering was organized by
workers in the field of culture, students,
volunteers and the network of local
teachers, which is one of the most extended
public networks in the country. The
communities were informed about the
scopes and purposes of the project and
were told that only the information they
wanted to provide would be published in
the Catálogos del Patrimonio Cultural
Venezolano, a series of more than 200 books
that presents the results of the inventory in
335 municipalities. Cultural heritage was
registered, for each of the municipalities,
under five categories: los Objetos (objects),
lo Construido (built heritage), la Creación
Individual (individual creations), la Tradición
Oral (oral traditions) and las Manifestaciones
Colectivas (collective manifestations).
An editing and publishing team was in
charge of bringing the information back to a
brief description of each of the elements for
practical reasons concerning the publication
of the inventory. The rest of the written and
audiovisual information is included in digital
form in a central database of IPC, with the
purpose to make it accessible via internet
and other means to the general public. IPC
also has the intention to publish a CD with
the cultural heritage of each of the
Venezuelan administrative regions and a
cultural mapping project. The inventory is
seen as a main cultural and educational tool
to be used in development policies.
From a legal point of view, the Tribunal
Supremo de Justicia (Supreme Court)
decreed that all cultural heritage that has
been duly registered and published in the
inventory, is subject of protection by the Law
on the Protection and Defence of Cultural
Heritage. When allocating financial
resources for safeguarding inventoried
intangible cultural heritage, priority is given
to cultural heritage under threat of
disappearing. Today, more than 84 000
cultural expressions have been inventoried
and more than 160 Catálogos have been
published and are available for free in every
cultural, social and educational institution of
each municipality.

The spirit of the Convention calls for inven- detail, and the mechanisms of conducting,
tories to be as representative as possible of the maintaining and updating those inventories will
intangible cultural heritage borne by local be determined by each State, ‘in a manner geared
communities and groups who make up the to its own situation’.
national community of the submitting State Party.
Above all, the elements that feature in inventories
of intangible cultural heritage should be selected
on the basis of the primary criterion of whether
they are recognized by one or more communities,
Photo © Jojo Unalivia / UNESCO

groups or, in some cases, individuals as being

expressions of their cultural identity. The
Convention requires that inventorying be done I The Darangen Epic of the
with the participation of those very communities. Maranao People of Lake
Other questions of classification, scope, level of Lanao, Philippines
 IDENTIYING AND INVENTORYING . 15

Photo © Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Colombia

Possible outline for inventorying elements
of the intangible cultural heritage

1. Identification of the element 4. State of the element: viability

1.1. Name of the element, as used by 4.1. Threats to the enactment;
community or group concerned; 4.2. Threats to the transmission;
1.2. Short, maximally informative title 4.3. Availability of associated tangible
(including indication of domain(s)); elements and resources;
1.3. Community(ies) concerned; 4.4. Viability of associated tangible and
1.4. Physical location(s) of element; intangible elements; L The Cultural Space of
1.5. Short description. 4.5. Safeguarding measures in place. Palenque de San Basilio,
Colombia

2. Characteristics of the element 5. Data gathering and inventorying

2.1. Associated tangible elements; 5.1. Consent from and involvement of the
2.2. Associated intangible elements; community/group in data gathering and
2.3. Language(s), register(s), speech level(s) inventorying;
involved; 5.2. Restrictions, if any, on use of inventoried
2.4. Perceived origin. data;
5.3. Resource persons(s): name and status or
3. Persons and institutions involved with affiliation;
the element 5.4. Date and place of data gathering;
3.1. Practitioners(s)/performer(s): name(s), 5.5. Date of entering data into an inventory;
age, gender, social status, and/or 5.6. The inventory entry compiled by….
professional category, etc;
3.2. Other participants (e.g., holders/ 6. References to literature, discography,
custodians); audiovisual materials, archives
3.3. Customary practices governing access to
the element or to aspects of it;
3.3. Modes of transmission;
3.4. Concerned organizations (NGOs and K The Makishi Masquerade, K The Lakalaka, Dances and
others). Zambia Sung Speeches of Tonga
Photo © Zambia National Commission for UNESCO

Photo © Pesi S. Fonua

With the support of the Government
of Norway

Intangible
Cultural
Heritage

Photo © T. Fernández
K The oral heritage and cultural manifestations of the Zápara people, Ecuador and Peru

Intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to

generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups,
and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus
promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.